The Freedom of Doubt

by Tim Maroney (1998)

Today we think of skepticism and religion as necessarily opposed.
Religion by its nature promotes dogma, and skeptics are above all
else dogma's enemies. Is there a way to reconcile these warring
siblings, the doubter and the dogmatist? There may be, but we will
have to delve deep into the skeptical way to find it. In contrast to
modern "debunking" skepticism, classical skepticism has significant
points of contact with mystical ideas of post-rational states of
mind, and explains a way to be open to religious ideas and trances
without believing in them.

Skepticism uses reasoning to deconstruct reasoning, promising a
happy state of suspended judgment known as ataraxia. Parallels
to ataraxia include mystical enlightenment, the koans of Zen,
the undifferentiated awareness of Yogic samadhi, and the English
mystic Aleister Crowley's "crossing the Abyss." Crowley is often
interesting due to his attempts to reconcile mysticism with
philosophy. I will often refer to him here because he describes
himself as a skeptical mystic.

The Modes and Slogans

Most of our knowledge of classical skepticism comes from the
writings of Sextus Empiricus, the second century CE Greek
philosopher, whose Outlines of Pyrrhonism1
summarizes an older system founded by Pyrrho. Sextus writes of the
difficulty of being certain of the conclusions of philosophy, and
explains the "modes of epochê"(eh-pah-KAY), or
methods for suspending judgment. Using these modes one discovers
equally plausible alternative ways of looking at dogmatic
assertions.

Epochê has aged well. Recent philosophical
achievements such as Nietzschean post-moral relativism and
Gödel's Theorem find ancient counterparts in the modes, and
epochê became an important part of phenomenology, a
paradigm of importance to twentieth century psychology and
anthropology. Its founder, Edmund Husserl, cast epochê
as a state "which completely bars me from using any judgment that
concerns spatio-temporal existence".2

Sextus gives four lists of modes of epochê . Space
permits me to consider only two of the lists (see table 1). The first
list gives ten modes. Although the mode of relativity is
inconspicuously listed in eighth place, it is the general case of
most of the other modes. All things are observed in relation to other
things, including relations to their observers, rather than by
themselves, and so we can say nothing about how things are in
themselves, but only how they appear to be relative to other
things.

Associated modes list specific relations between observers and the
observed. The first three modes note the role our biological
existence has in creating judgments. Animals perceive things
differently from species to species, just as the perceptions and
interpretations of individual people differ. Sense organs and mental
processes produce particular sensations and judgments that conjure
only certain relative qualities. We see as red what the dog sees as
gray; which is correct? The mode of admixtures notes that our
sensations are made up not only of their apparent objects but of the
intervening media, the environment, the sense organs, and the
intellect.

Some Modes of Epochê (Table 1)

The Ten Older Modes

The Variety of Animals

Differences Among Human Beings

Differences in the Sense Organs

Circumstances

Positions, Distances and Locations

Admixtures

Quantity and Constitution of External Objects

Relativity

Frequency and Infrequency of Occurrence

Ways of Life, Customs and Laws, Mythic Beliefs and
Dogmatic Opinions

The Five More Recent Modes

Disagreement

Infinite Regress

Relativity

Hypothesis

Circularity

Other modes note the relativity between observers in different
conditions, such as old or young, hungry or sated, moving or still.
There are also relativistic effects from distance, position, and
rarity. Form or constitution is a relation that creates disagreement
in qualities: the same objects have different qualities in different
forms, such as sand which appears rough when scattered, but smooth
when formed into a dune. Is sand rough or smooth?

The tenth mode, the mode of "ways of life, customs and laws,
mythic beliefs and dogmatic opinions," is a principle of moral
relativity, undercutting dogmatic ideas of good and evil. Different
cultures disagree on the moral value of particular actions, such as
eating with the hands or having sex in public. The more we know about
other cultures, the less we can be sure that our own moral judgments
are inherently correct.

Next comes a list of five more recent modes. The first is
disagreement -- when people disagree about a subject, and there seems
to be no clear way of resolving the disagreement, we must withhold
judgment. The second mode notes the infinite regress created by
resting arguments on assumptions. Every argument necessarily has
premises, but an argument is needed to justify those premises, but
then that argument has premises which themselves require further
justification. This creates a logical absurdity, an infinite regress.
Therefore, no argument rests on firm ground. The third mode,
relativity, is already familiar. The mode of hypothesis notes that
escaping from infinite regress by simply accepting premises without
question leaves those premises questionable and the conclusion in
doubt.

Finally there is the mode of circularity. This refers to the
well-known fallacy of the circular form of argument in which premises
are validated by the conclusion. For instance, if we were to say that
the Book of the Law is true because it says it is true, and since the
book is true its claim about its truthfulness could not be false, we
would be reasoning in a circle.

If the modes of epochê are the negative face of
skepticism, the slogans are the positive (see table 2). "I withhold
assent" and "perhaps and perhaps not" are skeptical responses to
"dogmatic statements about the non-evident." "Not more (this than
that)" means that there seem to be other ways of looking at the
situation. And so for the other slogans.

The Skeptical Slogans (Table 2)

"Not more," "nothing more" -- "not more this than
that, up nor down"

"Non-assertion" (aphasia)

"Perhaps," "It is possible," "Maybe", "Perhaps, and
perhaps not"

"I withhold assent" -- "I am unable to say which of
the alternatives I ought to believe and which not"

"I determine nothing" -- "I am now in such a state of
mind as to neither affirm or deny dogmatically the
matters in question"

"Everything is indeterminate" -- "There seems no
reason to prefer any dogmatic opinion to any other"

"Everything is non-apprehensible" -- "All matters of
dogmatic inquiry which I have considered seem to me
non-apprehensible"

"I am non-apprehensive" or "I do not apprehend"

"To every argument an equal argument is opposed"

The final slogan is "to every argument an equal argument is
opposed." This is given two different interpretations. One is that we
ought to try to answer every argument with an opposing
argument. Another holds that there is for every argument a sort of
anti-argument that destroys it. The latter, if carelessly phrased,
would be a dogmatic assertion, since we have not yet heard every
possible argument and therefore cannot know whether future arguments
may prove stronger than those we have examined so far. Nor do we know
whether our belief that we have countered any particular argument
will continue to seem accurate, since flaws could lurk within our
refutations. For that reason Sextus brackets this interpretation of
the slogan with modifiers which, although not among the slogans, are
just as often repeated: "it seems to me now" and "of those we have so
far examined."

This self-referentiality is one of skepticism's strong points. It
is not entirely convinced even of its own method, and instead of
creating new dogmas -- for instance, that nothing could ever be
proven -- it recognizes that its findings are themselves appearances
or seemings, subject to change in the future, and based on a less
than complete understanding. Belief is transfigured into a
non-dogmatic mode, but we are not faced with the impossible task of
accepting nothing.

Accepting without Belief

Epochê is sometimes translated as "abstention." Is
skepticism an ascetic state of renunciation? What do we do after we
have deconstructed all certainty? Should we ignore the aching in our
bellies as illusory? David Hume complains that Pyrrhonism would lead
to a world where "all human life must perish... and men remain in a
total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an
end to their miserable existence."3
Sextus, however, says this:

The honey appears to us to be sweet. This we grant, for
we sense the sweetness. But whether it is sweet we question
insofar as this has to do with the theory, for that theory is not
the appearance, but something said about the appearance....
Holding to the appearances, then, we live without beliefs but in
accord with the ordinary regimen of life, since we cannot be
wholly inactive. 4

And later,

We follow without doctrinal belief the common course of
life and we say that there are gods, and we reverence gods and
ascribe to them foreknowledge....5

Despite saying that there are gods, Sextus goes on to refute the
most important philosophical and theological theories of deity, and
expresses a pagan version of the Problem of Evil: the contradiction
between the absolutely good and all-powerful nature of deity and the
evil in the world. He does not believe in gods but he says that there
are gods. I will return to this important point.

We might ask whether Sextus is pulling back from the import of
skepticism. Why do we need to eat, drink, and align ourselves with
the mores of society, if these things rest on insupportable theories?
They don't; ordinary life rests on appearances. Appearances can be
called into question, but we might as well accept them in the
ordinary course of events. What compelling reason is there to oppose
them? The bizarre life of the ascetic is more likely to result from a
dogmatic religious theory rather than the skeptic's abstention from
statements about the world in itself.

In the essay "The Soldier and the Hunchback," Crowley arrives at a
similar conclusion when asking how anything shall stand before the
destructiveness of skepticism: "Well, one of the buttresses is just
the small matter of common sense." He goes on to explain that
although it cannot be proved that his friend Dorothy and her sausage
sandwiches even exist, "it's the taste I like."6
"Why not be a clean-living Irish gentleman, even if you do have
insane ideas about the universe?"7

Ataraxia and Enlightenment

Skepticism does not force us to ignore the world around us or to
adopt an ascetic way of life. What, then, are these modes and slogans
for? They are said to create aporia, a desirable state
of bemusement. The intellect is dumbstruck before a wealth of
contradictory ideas. By cultivating aporia, holds Sextus, one
can attain ataraxia, a state of happiness caused by ceasing to
ascribe good or evil values to phenomena.

Is ataraxia a "mystical" goal? That is a matter of
definition. It is psychological, not supernatural, but it is targeted
at an improvement of the inner life of humanity through mental
discipline. The teaching that aporia leads to ataraxia
resembles a religious doctrine. Sextus' insistence on the efficacy of
the skeptical method in creating happiness may seem to be a weak
point in his presentation. Generally he is careful to be skeptical
even about skepticism, rarely insisting on the permanence of any
assertion or conclusion. Casting skepticism as a way of life with
dramatic results in creating personal happiness is
uncharacteristically sweeping, perhaps even dogmatic.

One can easily draw parallels between this doctrine and the
Buddhist idea of escaping sorrow by detachment from the judgment of
conditions as desirable or undesirable. It could also be compared
with Crowley's idea of achieving "true wisdom and perfect happiness"
by opposing each idea with its contradiction. While each of these
doctrines has unique features and it would be a mistake to draw a
simplistic equation between them, they have a common thread, an
attempt to free the mind of preconceived values by breeding
alternative perspectives and loosening rigid value judgments. The
result is a type of happy wisdom. This accomplishment, variously
called ataraxia, enlightenment, or "exalted degree," cures the
disease of dogmatic judgment.

Like any religious doctrine, this one is susceptible to skeptical
questions. How do we know that ataraxia exists? Is it
permanent or transitory? Does the method of aporia work for
everyone? Is ataraxia an achievement or a preexisting
personality type? Is the description of the experience accurate?
Under what system of values is the state praiseworthy? Since
ataraxia seems to be an object of adoration, might its adorer
have exaggerated its attributes? If I poke you in the eye with a
stick, will you not still cry, enlightened one? Sextus has answers to
some of these questions, much as Buddhists do in the Questions of
King Milinda, but they are not always convincing in either
case.

Crowley's skeptico-mystical text "Liber Os Abysmi vel
Da'ath"8, describes a
philosophical practice purported to lead to a transcendence of
rationality, or as Crowley liked to say, "crossing the Abyss."

Let the Exempt Adept procure the Prolegomena of Kant, and
study it, paying special attention to the Antinomies. Also Hume's
doctrine of Causality in his "Enquiry."... Also Huxley's Essays on
Hume and Berkeley... [Etc.] Now let him consider special
problems, such as the Origin of the World, the Origin of Evil,
Infinity, the Absolute, the Ego and the non-Ego, Freewill and
Destiny, and such others as may attract him. Let him subtly and
exactly demonstrate the fallacies of every known solution, and let
him seek a true solution by his right Ingenium.

Such a skewering of all known philosophies is just what Sextus
accomplished in his day with the modes of epochê.
Crowley, unlike Sextus, seems to be saying that the mystic should
seek new solutions, but the seeker is being set up for failure:

Let then his reason hurl itself again and again against
the blank wall of mystery which will confront him.... Then will
all phenomena which present themselves to him appear meaningless
and disconnected, and his own Ego will break up into a series of
impressions having no relation one with the other, or with any
other thing... [His state of insanity] may end in ... his
rebirth into his own body and mind with the simplicity of a little
child. And then shall he find all his faculties unimpaired, yet
cleansed in a manner ineffable.... Hath he not attained to
Understanding?

Flowery language aside, having thoroughly experienced the futility
of philosophical reasoning, the mystic has been freed from its
grip.

The Hindu mantra "neti, neti" ("not this, not this"), which denies
the accuracy of perceptions and judgments, is directly negative
rather than skeptically detached, but it is similar to withholding
assent. Samadhi in Hindu Yoga is the mystical trance of the
reconciliation of opposites, or non-duality. Crowley recommends a
method of inducing samadhi by conjoining each thought with its
contradiction. In The Book of Lies he explains that the
meditator "enters into his Samadhi, and he piles contradiction upon
contradiction, and thus a higher degree of rapture, with every
sentence, until his armoury is exhausted, and... he enters the
supreme state."9 His method
recalls the final skeptical slogan, "to every argument an equal
argument is opposed." This is a persistent theme of The Book of
Lies, and its clearest point of contact with skepticism comes in
chapter 45, entitled "Chinese Music". I note in [brackets]
some parallels with the modes of epochê:

Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathematics is
only a matter of arbitrary conventions. [The mode of
hypothesis.]

"White is white" is the lash of the overseer; "white is black"
is the watchword of the slave. The Master takes no heed. [The
mode of conditions.]

The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has 5 notes.
[The mode of ways of life, customs and laws.]

The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more
certain it is that I only assert a limitation.

He says in a commentary that in the latter two sentences, "we find
a most important statement, a practical aspect of the fact that all
truth is relative," the mode of relativity.

The chapter closes with one of Crowley's more recognizable
quotes:

I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on
awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a
virgin in the morning.

He comments that "we see how skepticism keeps the mind fresh,
whereas faith dies in the very sleep that it induces." Skepticism is
presented as a meditative discipline, a vivid spiritual
deconstruction of normal modes of belief.

Skepticism in its mystical mode is a quest for a trans-rational
state which does not shut out rationality but multiplies thought into
a broad and unfettered symphony, without investing any one thought
with too much seriousness. While this might not make a poke in the
eye any more pleasant, it could provide both aesthetic reward and a
buffer against unpleasant thoughts and sensations. The benefits of
ataraxia may be exaggerated, but Sextus's report of a happy
result from aporia may yet refer to some real and useful
mental state.

Skepticism and Religious Dogma

It is surprising to find common ground between skepticism and
religion because religion seems intrinsically dogmatic. Its dubious
assertions fall readily before the skeptical scythe. The religious
sometimes respond that their beliefs are not dogmatic but
experiential. This fails to justify dogmatic interpretations
of experiences, though. For instance, it may well be that someone has
the experience of conversing with Jesus, but that does not prove the
theory that Jesus exists. Similarly, though the trance of samadhi may
occur, that does not demonstrate that samadhi redeems us in the next
world.

Vivekananda, the well-known Indian mystic (1863-1902), wrote that
rationality can serve as a guardian for the mystic.

Stick to your reason until you reach something higher;
and you will know it to be higher because it will not jar with
reason. The stage beyond consciousness is inspiration (samadhi)...
There is no external test for inspiration; we know it ourselves.
Our guard against mistake is negative: the voice of reason. All
religion means going beyond reason; but reason is the only guide
to get there.10

In ancient India there was a philosophical movement called
Cârvâka or Lokâyata, a form of
materialism resembling Pyrrhonism in important ways, and much
disliked by the religious. Unfortunately this movement's own writings
have not survived, but we do possess responses to
Cârvâka philosophy in the writings of its many
opponents. The Cârvâkas deny the reality and
transmigration of the self and the possibility of salvation in
another world, which are pillars of mainstream Indian philosophy.
These skeptics admit only perception as a mode of knowledge, much as
Pyrrhonists accept only appearances. But is samadhi a perception? It
seems it must be. A trance is a state of mind, and so it is
perceived; it has an appearance and so it can be known.

Did the Cârvâkas accept trances while denying
that they involved the invisible soul or âtman, or
provided otherworldly redemption? So it would appear from the account
of Gunaratna 11, who tells us
that the hedonistic Cârvâkas "carry human skulls,
smear their bodies with ashes and practice yoga." These
skeptical yogins disagree with the conventional
sâdhus or holy men who seek redemption through
meditation, but they do not deny that they attain pleasure through
meditation; they say simply that meditation has no purpose, that
"dharma is not superior to kâma," that is, that
meditation is no better than the pleasure of the body.

To consider another form of skeptical mysticism, Crowley's essay
"The Soldier and the Hunchback" says that we should not waver from
asking any reasonable question, but once we have done so we will find
the questions turning into answers as we climb the spiritual ladder.
Employing the (awkward) metaphor of question marks as hunchbacks and
exclamation points as soldiers, he says:

It takes a moment for a hunchback to kill his man, and
the farther we get from our base the longer he takes. You may
crumble to ashes the dream-world of a boy, as it were, between
your fingers; but before you can bring the physical universe
tumbling about a man's ears he requires to drill his hunchbacks so
devilish well that they are terribly like soldiers themselves. And
a question capable of shaking the consciousness of Samadhi could,
I imagine, give long odds to one of Frederick's
grenadiers.12

As Crowley implies, it seems likely that the average skeptic does
acquire some belief in the power of the tools of questioning.
However, he goes too far in trying to cast the modes of
epochê as positives: a question is only a question.
Crowley makes two mistakes. First, he believes without question in
the theological model often known as the Great Chain of Being (though
he does not call it that) by which existence is ordered from the most
to the least sacred. Crowley's Qabalistic ladder stretches from the
hellish Qliphoth through the fields we know up to the ultimate Kether
of Yetzirah and the Veils of Negative Existence. This model is a
cosmological dogma and it is easily thrown into doubt by simple
application of the modes of epochê. Without the ladder,
there is no basis for believing in a transformation of questions as
we climb.

Second, Crowley is emotionally driven to find a way out of
questioning and into certainty, while the Pyrrhonist sees questioning
as a pleasant state sufficient unto itself. Again and again in the
essay he expresses his desire that questions marks should turn into
exclamation points: "we may now resume our attempt to drill our
hunchback into a presentable soldier," "wouldn't it be jolly if our
own second ? suddenly straightened its back and threw its chest out
and marched off as ! ?", and so on. Elsewhere he says that "doubt is
a good servant but a bad master"13.
He wants to have absolute conviction in a religious system yet still
be a skeptic.

This desire for certainty led him to create a dogmatic religious
system. The definition of his magical order A.·. A.·.
contains this belief requirement:

All members must of necessity work in accordance with the
facts of Nature... So must all Members of the A.·. A.·.
work by the Magical Formula of the Æon. They must accept the
Book of the Law as the Word and the Letter of Truth, and the sole
Rule of Life. They must acknowledge the Authority of the Beast 666
and of the Scarlet Woman as in the book it is defined, and accept
Their Will as concentrating the Will of our Whole Order. They must
accept the Crowned and Conquering Child as the Lord of the
Æon, and exert themselves to establish His reign upon Earth.
They must acknowledge that "The Word of the Law is Thelema" and
that "Love is the law, love under will."14

A skeptic would respond simply "maybe, and maybe not."

Despite his skeptical meditation practice, Crowley believed that
his particular religious doctrine was an absolute truth and that it
was merely a mistake to disagree with it. We can also easily find
evidence of dogmatism in Buddhism and Hinduism, despite their
elements of skepticism. Dogmatism is tempting. There seems to be
something in us that draws us toward conviction in the non-evident.
Even Sextus seems to have a system of thought that rests on the
non-evident proposition that aporia leads to ataraxia.
We find a comfort in certainty and an anxiety in doubt, and so we
love systems of religion and philosophy. Their self-assured dogmas
give us a feeling of place in the universe and of participation in an
overarching order.

Should we resist this tendency? Is Sextus wrong in maintaining
that suspension of judgment will make us happy? Do we need to be
certain of things? Is this need so strong that it can justify holding
mistaken beliefs, such as the belief that God lives in the sky, or
that diseases are caused by malevolent spirits, or that Buddha
remembered all his millions of past lives, or that Vishnu was born as
a fish, or that our courses on earth have been foreordained by the
True Will? Shall we simply accept that credulity is necessary to our
happiness and forget that our pet dogmas are probably false?

The answer is a matter of degrees. We might not believe that
Vishnu had ever been born as a fish, but we could find some wisdom in
the story of this scaly avatar, as we might in any fiction, and so
our reaction to the story could be accepting while not believing. We
know from Kuhn that science is an unreliable social process, but
still we accept galaxies and molecules. There are many degrees of
belief and many types of acceptance. To be a dogmatist is not simply
to act as if any statement has value but to insist that some
non-evident insistence about the world is definitely and lastingly
true.

The ancients knew that affirming the value of a myth does not
require affirming its accuracy. Plutarch, for example, insists on a
nonliteral but positive interpretation of Egyptian myth: "We must not
treat legend as if it were history at all, but we should adopt that
which is appropriate in each legend in accordance with its
verisimilitude,"15 that is,
symbolically, in the way that myth resembles the world. Perhaps this
non-literalistic affirmation is what Crowley meant by his apparently
dogmatic A.·. A.·. belief requirement? Perhaps we must be
willing to act as if these myths were true, even though we do
not believe in them? Unfortunately, no. In a footnote to the
passage above, he addresses the conflict between freedom of thought
and doctrinal mandate:

This is not in contradiction with the absolute right of
every person to do his own true Will. But any True Will is of
necessity in harmony with the facts of Existence; and to refuse to
accept the Book of the Law is to create a conflict within Nature,
as if a physicist insisted on using an incorrect formula of
mechanics as the basis of an experiment.

This is an exhortation to literal belief, not deliteralized mythic
engagement. It is a fact of Nature that the Book of the Law is the
scripture appointed for humanity in this Æon. No skeptics need
apply.

In Crowley's other magical order, the Ordo Templi Orientis,
applicants to the first degree of initiation sign a form affirming
that they accept the Book of the Law. This is a modern requirement
dating only from the late 1970's and early 1980's.16
Because of the use of the term "accept," the form may derive from the
A.·. A.·. passage above, but it has a more liberal
interpretation -- it is taken to mean only that the applicant does
not wish to publish a changed edition, which is a peculiar reading of
"acceptance" of scripture. The fact that the acceptance requirement
has been reinterpreted is interesting. It shows that the current
membership is less comfortable with dogmatism than Crowley was, and
is willing to make space for deliteralized but still positive
interpretations of scripture. Today's membership rebels at aspects of
Crowley's dogmatism.

This liberal reinterpretation is a work in progress. While a bald
dogmatic statement requiring belief in a particular book is
unpalatable today, other pillars of Crowley's system are still widely
granted the status of fact by his followers. The two most prominent
dogmas are True Will and the procession of the Æons.17
Neither of these primary dogmas are viewed simply as myths or
fictions; instead they are regularly asserted as fact. Yet neither
one is well supported by evidence or argument, nor are they
phenomenological truths like the experience of samadhi. They are
believed on faith. As myths their value is beyond skepticism's power,
but as assertions of truth they are vulnerable to the modes of
epochê.

Sextus' observation of the skeptical attitude toward gods -- to
accept their traditional attributes and yet withhold belief -- shows
one way out of this dilemma. We need not condemn the ideas of the
Æons or of True Will; we need only to "bracket" them (in
Husserl's phrase), to place them within their context where they can
provide spiritual sustenance without degenerating into dogma.
Skeptics within a mystical or magical tradition are free to frame its
myths as the fictions they are. Doubt is not a constraint -- it does
not forbid us from exploring the beauties of the spirit, as some
modern-day "skeptics" believe. Instead, skepticism frees us to plunge
into the profound depths of myth and trance, without concern that we
will be blinded by their wonders.

Notes:

1. I have relied throughout on the
recent critical edition of Benson Mates, The Skeptical Way
(Oxford University Press, 1996). I have also consulted the Loeb
edition.

10. Vivekananda, The Yogas and
Other Works (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekanda Center, 1953), p.
546. From the "Inspired Talks," 1895.

11. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, ed.,
Cârvâka/Lokâyata : An Anthology of Source
Materials and Some Recent Studies (New Delhi: Indian Council of
Philosophical Research, 1990), pp. 266-78. I am indebted to Mordecai
Shapiro for referring me to Indian skepticism.

16. Personal e-mail from Bill
Heidrick, September 8 and 9, 1998. "It's mainly from Grady
[McMurtry]'s time, with some minor variations in language
since. Gross and deliberate misquotes from Liber AL had appeared in
print (e.g., in a Level Press unauthorized edition of Liber Aleph and
other places). The original reason for the requirement was to
conserve the text without such alteration."

17. There are also other prominent but
less central dogmas, such as the accuracy of the Tree of Life model
of the universe as interpreted by Crowley and the Golden Dawn; the
reality of reincarnation, chakras, Secret Chiefs, and incorporeal
spirit beings; the ancient descent and unique power of a particular
sex magick formula; and the efficacy of thaumaturgy, divination,
numerology, astrology and initiation. Skeptical questions about these
dogmas are not frequently raised in the Thelemic community. I hope to
address some of them in detail in future columns.